In a 5-0 ruling, the state's highest court said the 2019 General Assembly did not run afoul of the free speech guarantees of either the Indiana Constitution or the U.S. Constitution by enacting Senate Enrolled Act 243, sponsored by state Sen. Mike Bohacek, R-Michiana Shores.

The law makes it a class A misdemeanor, punishable by a $5,000 fine and/or a year in jail, for a person to distribute an intimate image, online or in-person, when the person knows, or reasonably should know, the individual depicted in the image does not consent to its distribution.

An intimate image is defined in the law as a photograph, digital image or video of a person engaged in penetrative sexual relations or displaying uncovered buttocks, genitals or female breasts.

Justice Mark Massa, writing for the Supreme Court, said following an exhaustive review of state and national free speech protections that the limited infringement on liberty imposed by the statute is "vastly outweighed by the public health, welfare, and safety served."

He noted "revenge porn" is featured on some 10,000 websites, in addition to being distributed through social media, blogs, emails and text messages — often with the names and contact information for the individuals depicted in the images attached to the images.

He said that leads to revenge porn victims frequently being harassed, stalked, extorted, solicited for sex and even threatened with sexual assault, in addition to suffering severe psychological harm, including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, despair, loneliness, alcoholism, drug abuse and significant losses of self-esteem, confidence and trust.

Moreover, Massa said the law is sufficiently narrowly tailored to advance the state's compelling interest in protecting individuals from the unique and significant harms stemming from the nonconsensual distribution of their intimate images that it avoids unnecessarily abridging speech.

"We easily conclude that individuals have a substantial privacy interest in keeping intimate images private, and the nonconsensual disclosure of such images is an invasion of privacy in the most intolerable manner," Massa said.

"This statute reflects a longstanding government interest in preventing the substantial invasion of privacy that occurs when an intimate image is taken and distributed without the individual's consent."

The case originated when Conner Katz, a student at Trine University, allegedly sent his ex-girlfriend through Snapchat a two second video of him holding the hair of a fully clothed woman — later identified as his then-current girlfriend — while her head went up and down toward his crotch.

According to court records, the woman's face was not visible, nor any intimate portion of Katz's anatomy, and the Snapchat video only was viewed a single time and was not saved by the recipient. It was sent as part of an effort to set up a four-way sexual encounter.

Prosecutors charged Katz with distribution of an intimate image after his ex-girlfriend told his girlfriend she had seen it, and Katz allegedly admitted to his girlfriend that it was wrong for him to send the video without her consent.

Katz has not yet been tried on the charge since Steuben Circuit Magistrate Randy Coffey initially dismissed the case after concluding Indiana's revenge porn law was unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court decision reversing that ruling reinstates the charge against Katz and sets the stage for a possible trial. Although the high court said conviction is far from a foregone conclusion.

Massa observed it will be up to a jury to decide whether the image Katz shared through Snapchat sufficiently depicted an "intimate image" as defined by the statute.

According to court records, the victim, along with her identical twin sister, separately have sued Katz for civil damages under a different 2019 nonconsensual pornography statute, also sponsored by Bohacek in Senate Enrolled Act 192.